The material presented
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information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
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This is the start of step 4. I wrote this in my step 3 post reposonse. Since writing it, I see more and more *S* I have done. Feeling kinda crappy at the moment. But I also know I need to do this. there is no other way, unless someone forced me, which no one will. So... I am forcing myself. I don't want to beat myself up tho. I don't deserve that. If you *hear* me doing that... well.. Ok, thanks for reading. Woops
I recognize that I have no control over anything but myself, and I am happies that way. It suits me better to just be with things, just sit with them. Oddly, my STBAH is the same way. I do beleive in a higher power, I always have, since i was very little. For years I wouldn't say "God" in vain because I felt it wasn't warranted. I'm Ok with saying it now, say it all the time, really... figure God knows the difference between being called out, and slang expressions... :) (as I understand him, right?)
The things that leave a pit in my stomach are few. Sometimes they come up out of nowhere tho. there was one time on a bus in a faraway city adn this little boy my son's age was antagonizing him, making faces, being rude. And my son was shocked and asked me about that little boy and why he was behaving so rudely, and I said in a loud voice "Don't worry about him. Some people just don't teach their kids how to have good manners and so their kids are rude. For some people it's OK to be rude, I guess. It's just for the bus ride and then you'll never have to see him, or his rudeness again. It's nothing personal." The thing that makes me cringe about that is that there is no way I can take back what I said, and I think the overall message to the boy, to my son, and to the boy's mother, wasn't one I really beleive in. It was out of character for me to be that way in the first place, but to teach my son that strangers don't matter and we can just blow off people we're never going to see again and treat them however we choose to... well, I feel really yucky about that. I don't know why I said it. I could see the mother almost choke at what I told my son, like she wanted to say something to me, probably to tell me where to go! I could tell she was a decent person but that her parenting had gotten away from her. Maybe her son has ADHD and she gave up trying to control his behavior? I am sure she has issues she was facing. But I feel a pit in my stomach when I think of how quickly I judged her, and her son. I can be judgemental like that, and make snap decisions about people. It isn't fair, and no one died and made me God. I can think of a hundred other responses I could have had... I want to tell my son I was wrong, and apologize for my attitude towards perfect srtangers (Or imperfect strangers as the case may be).
It's not Ok to judge people like that. We are all fighting some battle or other.
Another thing I feel a pit in my stomach over is that I found some photos of STBAH's. They were of x girlfriends, many of them were riske/nude/soft porn. I took them away from him and got rid of them. He knows I did this, and he let me. But really I had no business in his photo albumns in the first place, much less throwing photos away. I have apologized to him. But there's more to it than that. While I looked at the photos, I had a million negative thoughts about him, and about the women in the pictures. I judged him, too. I decided he was shallow, and cheap. I wanted to throw up at the pictures. They really effected me. Throwing them away wasn't enough, either. I burned several of them, or tortured them with water and a needle. If i had been a Voodoo lady, I would have stabbed the x girlfriends doing so, and been glad for it. Why? They didn't do anything to me? I don't understand where I was at emotionally and mentally. I was at my limit, but why did I react the way I did?
I was much worse than STBAH has ever been to me. Much worse.
... I have apologized to him for judging him and acting right in that he deserves to be judged for having those kind of pictures when he's got a new girlfriend. In a normal world, I guess that is the case. But this isn't a normal world.
I still feel sick about that.
Another thing I have remorse for is that one time I left my son alone with a baby we were baby sitting. I was gone for 10 minutes and came flying through the door frantic and freaking out that he was 11 and the baby couldn't talk yet, and while I had been out, I had this weird idea that something bad could happen... that the baby would be harmed and it would be my fault for not listening to my instincts. When I got home, I could hear the baby crying. My son had taken her into the bathroom where he was peeing. She was in the car seat and he was trying to swing it with one hand and pee with the other. I burst into the bathroom and again... I judged... quickly, harshly. I was in a frantic mess-- like my worst night mare was coming true. I literally flipped out. I snatched the car seat away from him, told him to straighten out his pants, and accused him of being inappropriate with the baby. My son was 11. He had never baby sat before. I had been molested as a kid, and a lot of my reaction, I realized soon after, was my own BS coming into play. But I freaked my son out, he cried and cried and asked me to please stop talking. I was out of control, and there was no happy ending for that scene. After I had calmed down some and realized the baby had been safe all along, he explained to me that she cried the whole time I was gone and he had been doing his best to get her to stop. We sat on the couch with her on our laps, and she giggled and smiled, drank her milk (I had been at the store to get her some formula). I knew she was Ok. But he would be different for ever. He had alwas been very loving with every baby, and we had been watching this baby for a month or so, and we liked her and her mother a lot. I RUINED him on babies now. He doesn't like them at all anymore. Doesn't even look at them. I tried to explain to him that my reaction had more to do with me than it had to do with him or with reality. It was the first and only time he's seen me totally loose it, and I pray it will be the last.
Thank you so much for sharing this and being so honest is what went on and how it makes you feel. It's given me a very interesting insight into me as I too can make snap decisions on someones behaviour never thinking about the whole picture of their feelings and whats going on in their lives.
I notice I do this with my daughter and it's something I have been working on a lot at the moment to kurb.
I find that the more I am compassionate with me I then have much more time to sit and think about situations then react sometimes not saying anything
Progress not perfection. You are doing great woops.
big hugs
chezza
__________________
Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.
Hey Thanks everyone. So what if I keep doing this and it turns out I have 5 zillion moments I am remorseful about?
I mean, where do I draw the line?
There are some biggies, some other biggies... I mean, at least one very very huge one. MY son's dad and I were young when we met-- 19 and 21. I got pregnant the month after we moved in together-- we had known each other for 6 months. We both wanted the baby, and we were already engaged with a 2 year time frame for when to get married. So, we had my son. I started to change. I started to really want to be a good mom, super mom, in fact, and to have a great family. Well, my son's dad wanted that too, but he was fihgting a substantial learning curve. Having the baby didn't put him into immediate growth and maturity like I had experienced... so it was that our connection to eachother waned. I wasn't as into frolicky behaviors as I had been, including sex. I also didn't want loud music, or lots of people just stopping by any more. I was willing to negotiate everything tho. But he just... I don't know. At the time, it seemed like he was just choosing to stay young and not get his act together. He ran up credit card debts with nothing to show for it. He coul,dn't get ahead at work, had no ambitions anymore. I felt pretty dismal. And then he started cheating on me-- at first with an X girlfriend from high school. Then it was random encounters. He was also calling 1 900 numbers, going to a strip bar, and who knows what else? When I found out about this, I was furious. I had a big 9 volt flashlight in my hand, and I actually meant to hit him in the head with it. I took a swing, and he blocked it. I jammed his finger. He stood there, crying and I told him to F* off and ran down the hill and locked myself in a shed. He came to the shed door and said "That's it? WE're not going to talk about it? You just want me to go, away, for good?" I told him to go kiss our sweet son and "tell him you're sorry he can't have a dad!" That did it. He cried and I felt badly. I let him in. We stayed up talking, all night. All night. We started staying up talking all night, every night, for a few weeks until there was nothign left to talk about. My emotions were wildly capricious. I either wanted to kill him, kick him out, or totally forgive him and get married the next day. My pride was so wounded. We were so poor and had no clue what to do about that. Pride that we had a good family was the thing I held on to. And I wasn't even sure that I had that anymore. He was ruining that for me, in my mind at the time. Well, we made up. I chose to trust him, and little by little, we did OK for 2 more years. He was on a somewhat shorter leash than he had been, but that was something I thought would abate with time. Then one day he came to me at work and told me "A-- says she's in love with me" I laughed. How would A-- come to that conclusion? She hardly knows you! Well, A-- had been visiting him at work every day for the last month-- you get the idea. NOthing physical had happened. They were meeting in private tho, and having intimate conversations. Given his prior track record, I couldn't trust that it would not go any where. It was an emotional affair, but an affair none the less. SO there I was, after ALL the work we had gone through... the last 2 years of rebuilding trust and forgiveness... all those all night conversations and going to work with big circles under my eyes... all for not becuase here I was, right back to feeling like there was something waiting to snatch my family out from under me. So, I made him choose. I told him "It seems like P (our baby) and I must not really figure into your big scheme of things if you keep ending up with othe women on the fringes/in the wings. Why don't you just be honest and tell me you aren't into being a family? That you'd really rather just be single and persue other women? That is what a MAN does... a MAN owns up to his shit and doesn't drag people through it. So, be a man! Do the right thing, for once!" That is pretty much verbatim what I told him. And he said "What? SO you want me to break up with you?" I said "Seems like you want to anyway. That's what your actions are saying, and they speak a lot louder than words". he ended up saying "If you want me to break up with you, I will. But it's not what I want." I told him I was so tired of trying to have a good family and feeling like he was constantly working against it. I told him I was tired of the debt with nothing to show for it, tired of working all the time (Both of us) and feeling like the rest of my life was going to be working lame jobs and barely scraping by. I said that I felt that if it weren't for him, I would be doing better... persuing a career, perhaps, or going back to college, or.... So, he broke up with me.
He married A-- 8 months later even tho he had told me that it was her idea and he was hopeful he'd come around. 7 months after they were married, he still was screwing things up, from my POV. We could talk to each other, we were family, and he always had my back. I would tell him about the men in my life, who iwas dating, and he was usually very happy for me if it sounded like a good guy. We talked about our son and how cute he was or how funny. We were always calling each other to share cute stories like that. He got arrested for swinging a skateboard at a car, and for some reason, I said "You just keep on screwing up, and dragging everyone down with you. Now you can't pay child support because you have legal fees. Great. Why are you so self destructive? Why don't you just kill yourself and get it over with? Spare us all the misery of living through all this unneeded crap!"
wow, was I way out of line there, huh? I regretted saying that, immediately. I called him back and apologized and said I knew better than to say that. He said "It was pretty harsh thing for you to say."
A month later, he disappeared. Someone was seen jumping off a bridge that same day, but there was no description.
3 months... for 3 months I hoped he was going to show up on my doorstep saying "I left A--! I need to be home wiht you and P." I was still totally in love with him, despite everything. First love... I don't know if it ever totally goes away.
His body was found, in the river, 3 months post mortem, on what had been the due date of our son-- smack dab one week after our son's birthday and one week before mine. His memorial service was held on my birthday.
I dream about him, sometimes he feels like an old old distant memory. And other times, he is right there. Sometimes I dream that he does show up on my doorstep saying nothing except "I am home." and I feel only releif, and amazement that he never stopped loving me.
Thank You for having the courage to share your heart with us. I am so sorry for the pain and loss you have experienced. This disease is certainly powerful and relentless.
I certainly had to think..know and feel Step One i before I could proceed with any other step. The 3 Cs were also essential. Then I could look at my actions as you are doing and own my part in the happenings of my life. These stepsl helped me to forgive my husband and myself for our mistakes and to move forward with more peace and serenity in my life.
You are doing fine Just keep on working your program.
My son's dad was never daignosed with anything and he didn't use or abuse drugs. The most anyone can figure is that he beame mentally ill in the early-mid twenties, which is when a lot of mental health issues start to spring up. NOt that it matters in the story... but in the long run, I am left with this idea that the first man became suicidal, the second man became abusive, and the third man is an addict.
NOt feeling sorry for myself, but trying to acknowledge these facts and maybe sort out what they mean, in a gentle, kind way. I don't want to assume that "I'm just attracted to F*'d up men" which is not the point. Maybe F'd up men are attracted to me?
In any case, all I can do is control my own behavior here and so I"m deciding to cherish the good times I have now with STBAH, and to take care of myself meanwhile being as supportive to him as I can be. I don't enable him, which is good. I'm not caught up in his disease--- it's more like his addictions are getting me to seek help and support, not for him, but for me to sorta take stock of the situation.
[I know I didn't cause my son's dad to kill himself. I am mostly just sorry that I said what I did, and that it hurt his feelings. It was, unfortunately, one of our last conversations. He had enough trouble, and I was his friend/family. I thought I'd know him all my life, and I felt so good knowing that I'd have him and my son as constants I could count on, to some measure. It still makes me really sad. But sad is all. And somewhat sorry... just somewhat. I realize that I said what I did out of hurt and anger, that I was young, inexperienced. I didn't think in a million years that he was actually suicidal... just a run of the mill self destructiveness present. Usually, he put it to good use. There is no proof he actually wanted to die that day. no note, nothing to indicate he knew he'd hit his head and drown. He was a stunt-man sort and had been on a swim team in high school--- he knew how to fall, knew how to swim. I beleive that he wasn't ending his life, b ut starting over by making a sort of "egocide". There is a journal entry the day he disappeared that says "I promise I'll get help."
Sometimes I feel like his death is really just a mistake, like a clerical error! It's been 9 years, and I cope pretty well with it these days. But there are those moments when it seems like it can't be true.... it's just too horrible. But this is most likely that because of the 3 months of not knowing where he was, or if he was the jumper seen that day, that in those 3 months, I called the Medical Examiner daily, I called search and rescue daily. We had a 800 number set up to find him, and people would call it and say they saw him-- some were really credible-- some were people claiming to be psychics or the like.... there was a woman who could explain him to a T, even mentioned his Tattoos, and she said "Is this you" and showed him the "Missing Person" flier, and he said "Yes" she said "Then I have to call this number" and he said "Please don't. But if you do, tell my family I'm all right."
That was 3 weeks after he disappeared, and for some reason, it's like part of me is still waiting for the follow up report on his condition. I know that is ridiculous. So I went to therapy and was diagnosed with, beleive it or not, a post traumatic stress disorder. I was shaking all the time, couldn't sleep. seeing something fall, or drop, or even a bird drop off a branch startled me. The impression in my head of a body falling off a bridge was always with me, and it spooked me. I know now that that is the minds' way of normalizing so that you can come to terms and accept the thing you fear. It just keeps repeating it over and over until you choose to handle it another way than be scared and run and hide. I didn't realize I had a choice.
The lingering results of trauma are those weird moments when my brain still rejects the truth and seems to think I might bump into him one day.
Or maybe, one day, I will bump into him. Maybe not here on this planet in this life....
*ah* that is a sweet thought to me, actually- that there is this lifelong experience of love, that transcends the time and the space. That there is a connectednes even now. Ok! Whew! TI think that is all I can handle for one day!
